Energy consumption in a fiber Ethernet network systems is adversely impacted by fiber ports not going into a power savings mode when traffic on such ports is low or non-existent. Currently, the only available solution to this problem is a user-initiated command to power down a particular fiber port of a fiber Ethernet network system. This type of user-initiate solution is undesirable and inefficient due at least in part to a user having to determine periods of port inactivity, idle port periods are relatively short compared to the time of human intervention, and manual intervention cannot react if/when unplanned activity exists.
IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 802.3az standard offers a protocol for providing power savings for copper Ethernet ports. However, IEEE 802.3az is specifically designed for copper ports and, thus, is not a solution for fiber ports. Solutions according to this standard can run on fiber ports, but there will be little to no power savings because lasers of the fiber ports would still be enabled and consuming power. Similarly, IEEE 802.11e applies only to wireless devices and not to fiber ports. This wireless-specific power savings standard provides for buffering of packets on one device until another device requests them. This buffering allows a handheld device to go into hibernate mode but not miss any packets.
It is also known that the standard design for Small Form Factor Pluggable devices (e.g., SFP and SFP+ devices) requires that a transmit laser of a fiber port be constantly on in order for the device at the other end of a connection to detect link/signal. In this manner, SFP devices currently do not turn off the laser to save power when no connection is present. Accordingly, the always-on requirement results in power consumption even in cases where the SFP device is not connected to another device.
Therefore, implementing power savings for fiber ports of an Ethernet network system in a manner that overcomes drawbacks associated with conventional power savings solutions for network system ports would be advantageous, desirable and useful.